Jules Verne's son rewrote his posthumous novels, and Verne's lost 1863 novel stayed in a locked safe until his great-grandson forced it open in 1989

After Verne died in 1905, his son Michel and publisher Hetzel's house brought out the remaining manuscripts as posthumous novels. In 1978 collector Piero Gondolo della Riva said at the Cerisy colloquium that Michel had altered them, in some cases heavily. Manuscripts matched each other but differed from the printed books. Verne's grandson Jean Jules-Verne contested the claim; for one novel, The Lighthouse at the End of the World, the changes were slight. For The Thompson Travel Agency, no Verne manuscript has been found^†. Separately, Verne's 1863 novel Paris in the Twentieth Century had been rejected by his publisher Jules Hetzel, who wrote that Verne had undertaken an impossible task. After Verne died, Michel locked it in a strongbox and listed it in a catalog of his father's writings. In 1989 Verne's great-grandson Jean forced the strongbox open before selling the family house in Toulon. Experts verified the manuscript by 1991. Hachette and Le Cherche Midi published it in September 1994.